


Shadows on the Wall

by JenniferVo



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-22
Updated: 2014-08-25
Packaged: 2018-02-14 06:34:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2181633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenniferVo/pseuds/JenniferVo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Phantom Hacker has been stealing money from Starling City's most successful, corrupted people and giving it to the poor. Only problem is all of his targets are on the List. With the help of Felicity Smoak, Oliver Queen must track this hacker down, stop him and all the while finding himself drawn to the beautiful, intelligent IT girl who thinks he's just looking out for his family</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ann Liverpudlian](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Ann+Liverpudlian).



> Hey guys! This is my first new story reguarding the Arrow TV Show, which I watched and loved and is obsessed with because of the encouragements for me to watch it by a dear friend of mine, and so...
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> PS: The timeline and events in this fanfic does not follow the TV Show's so don't be surprise if any sudden changes happen and don't presume anything because I'm mixing it all up :)

"The Phantom Hacker strikes again after a week of inactivity and this time his target was Judge Steven Perry - " The reporter said and Oliver Queen glanced over his shoulder at Diggle.

"A corrupted judge who accepts bribes from criminals to give them from none to limited prison time," he said, arms crossing over his chest.

Nodding, Oliver raised a little hard cover notebook with names scribbled onto its yellowed pages and flipped through the List, searching for the name Steven Perry. And he found it. "Whoever they are, they definitely have this." He closed the thing and tossed it carelessly onto the table before him.

"Maybe it's just a coincidence," Diggle said behind him. "Maybe the Phantom Hacker picks out the names based on the person's crimes and financial income in order to distribute most of that income to to the ones who needs it? Maybe it's justice in his eyes." He shrugged as Oliver stared at the TV screen.

"Maybe. But doing so doesn't mean good to anyone except if you're the one who's getting the money," he spoke, pushing himself off of the table to face his friend, his brows furrowed and his mouth was set into a grim line. "What he's doing is making him out to be a criminal."

"And he isn't?" Diggle raised an amused eyebrow at Oliver and recieved a look in return.

"Whoever he is, no matter how good he is at hacking and covering his traces, someone's going to catch him sooner or later. It's just a matter of time and even if the police did dig a little deeper and found out why he's doing it, there are those who are careful at hiding their crimes and he'd just be leaving a mess for us to clean up."

"I think we've established that last point. After the last two names he hacked and you off-ing them both, people are starting to get suspicious."

"Exactly, that's why we need to find this guy and put some sense into him."

"Not to turn him to the police?"

"He means well, Diggle, he just needs someone to stop him from getting in our way," Oliver said. "and put away."

"And how are you gonna find him? No offense, but you aren't exactly as half as tech-savvy as those who are looking for him. How are you going to track a hacker whose alias is the Phantom Hacker? You don't even know if he's really a he."

Under the scrutinizing stare of one called Mr. John Diggle, friend, bodyguard, partner-in-crime, Oliver thought about the ramifications as to how he was going to track the elusive Phantom Hacker down and knock some sense into him. Then, it hit him.

"You remember Felicity Sm - "

"Felicity Smoak? You've been going to for analysis of evidences masked by crappy lies? Yeah, I think I remember her."

"Just go get the car, Dig," Oliver said in an exasperate tone and Diggle laughed. "And just so you know, your B.S. stories are getting worse."

"I'm well aware."

 

"That's why I need you help to find who this Phantom Hacker guy is," Oliver said, bracing his weight against the table by his arms and leaning toward the IT girl who sat in her chair, her body angling away from him away as she looked him suspiciously with a hint of humor in her intelligent blue eyes.

Felicity Smoak was an employee in the IT department of Queen Consolidated and has been the to-go girl for Oliver whenever he needed to get some "research" done on someone, to get a criminal's bullet hole riddled laptop salvaged, to decrypt the information stored on a security fob,... the norm. Today, she was dressed a form fitting fuchsia colored blouse accompanied by a dark grey pencil skirts which hugs her legs perfectly underneath the desk. Her half black, half lava pattern was perched on her nose as she tucked a strand of blonde hair behind her ear and narrowed her eyes at him, wanting to seem serious but it probably just came out as her giving him a funny look.

"So what you're telling me is that you want to track this guy down because you're afraid that he'll go after your family next?" She said quickly in a rushed breath, her words mixing and stumbling onto each other as she spoke but somehow every syllable came out as clear as if she hadn't been spitting out words faster than her brain could process. " 'Cause you know, he might be working with the Vigilante and that guy's not so bad, either. I mean, he's still a criminal and all but isn't he like, bringing the bad people to justice but it's not like I like his way of doing it. It's illegal. Still, the Phantom Hacker, he could mean well but I mean, I wouldn't know 'cause - "

"Felicity," Oliver said, a smile gracing his lips and she clamped her pink mixed with a shade of purple lips shut before rushing out a "sorry".

Diggle just chuckled quietly beside Oliver.

"Look, I'm going out on a whim looking after my family here. Maybe the guy has good intentions but maybe he doesn't. Stealing from the rich and giving it to the poor, it sounds like a good thing but we don't know if the rich people he's stealing from are all bad and the good he's giving it to are all good so please, help me catch him," he said, his own pair of blue eyes looked straight into her, conveying the sincerity of his request, which, of course, was total and absolute B.S.

"I don't know…" she said, looking indecisive. "Isn't the police all over the case? His and the Vigliante? And Malcolm Merlyn, he's offering a fifty grand for any useful information that might help the police with the investigation and all of the tech guys, who might be better than me but you know, it's a small possibility, are all over the Phantom Hacker's trail… They're like, the pros and they can't even find him then what are the chances that I will?"

"Felicity, you are the smartest person I know. If there's anyone out there that can do this it's you," he said, his voice soft and convincing. "Plus, they haven't caught the Vigilante yet and he's been at it for almost five months, I worry that they won't be able to catch this guy in time, if he ever chooses to hit my family's bank accounts next that is."

"Why? Have your family committed a crime?" she blurted out and immediately pursed her lips together as Oliver frowned at her. "Not that I'm accusing your family of anything, it's just that it's a logical thought, I mean, it's not logical that your family had committed a crime. It's just that we were talking about rich families getting attacked by the Phantom Hacker and most of them being bad and your family is rich and… I'm going to shut up now." She stopped and took a deep breath while Oliver and his bodyguard just stood there, watching her.

Felicity moved her eyes back and forth between the two men standing before her, crowding her space and interrupting her work and let out a breath.

"Okay, I'll help you," she said, her shoulder sagging in defeat.

"Great," Oliver said, looking to Mr. Diggle and grinning. "Call us if you find anything."

"Okay," she said, reaching out for a file on her desk and opening it. "Oh and I did what you ask and found that the solvent used in your buddy Kevin's hangover cure - " her eyes darted to Oliver, who had straightened himself and was looking oh-so-very innocent " - was run off water originated within a ten block radius of where East Glades meets the bay. Now, I don't know about you but I'm pretty particular about what I put in my body, too and my advice is that don't drink your buddy Kevin's hangover cure." She told him, snapping the file shut and extending it toward him. "It's more likely to give you diarrhea and a trip to a hospital than curing your supposedly hangover."

Felicity then smiled at him mockingly as he smiled back at her with a small nod. "I will tell him that he should do better if he wants to start an energy drink company. Thank you for your efforts."

She nodded sarcastically and replied: "No problem."

After that, they left the Queen Consolidated building and went to the Foundry to tend to other important businesses.

 

Three days later, the Phantom Hacker struck again.

This time, it was Justin Adkisson, a businessman who uses his facilities to launder money for criminals and get 15% of the amount. But the police didn't know that. All they knew was that a privileged rich guy had just been robbed off of his money and that the Phantom Hacker had just once again committed a felony, leaving another mess for him to clean up because technically he was going to have to deal with this Mr. Adkisson sooner or later and he really didn't feel like giving Justin the chance to garner any sympathy from anyone.

After all, they were the good guys in this whole ordeal. Well, kind of. And their goal was the same, except one was reckless and misguided.

People say that third time's a charm and my, my was the name Justin Adkisson scribbled inside the little notebook that he found in his dad's pocket after carrying him halfway into the island, Lian Yu, to bury him.

"You can survive this, make it home, make it better, right my wrongs, but you got to live through this first."

That was the last thing Oliver's dad, former CEO of Queen Consolidated, had told him before he shot himself in the head to give his son the best chance at survival because there was only enough food left for one person to live.

They were going on a cruise on the Robert's yacht, the Queen Gambit, when a storm rolled in and wrecked the ship, causing it to sink to the bottom of the ocean, leading the death of his father and those who were on the it and condemning him to five years on a hellish island, fighting for survival.

Oliver didn't even call Felicity, oh no, he went straight to her cubicle the minute he heard about the attack on the news, wanting to catch this guy more than ever. The thought of having to deter from his plans just to go bringing another name which was set aside for later on just to justify the Phantom Hacker's actions was getting on his nerves.

"Did you get him?" Oliver asked as he rested one hand on the back of her chair and the other at the edge of her desk, bending over so he could see what was going on.

Apparently, what was going on was a bunch of computer code, many tabs opening and closing and more computer codes.

"I picked up on his trail just before he started to cover it up. This guy's good, whoever he is. Really good," Felicity said, typing away on her keyboard with her eyes flitting from one corner of the screen to another nonstop. "I've been monitoring the bank accounts of the rich and guilty in the city. You've gotta be amazed how many people are so willing to break the law to earn some additional cash these days. I think I'm starting to lose my faith in humanity."

Oliver glanced at her and noticed that their faces were inches away from each other but it didn't seem as if she cared, or maybe she had other things on her mind. Felicity was wearing long gold leaf-shaped earrings that sways back and forth every time she moved her head. Her blonde hair was tied up into a ponytail and her glasses were slipping on the bridge of her nose before one of her hands stopped typing abruptly and came up to push it back.

"Almost got it…" she said and he snapped out of his trance, turning back to the computer screen just to see the thing suddenly turn black and shuts itself down. "Hey! What the hell?" she exclaimed, typing something onto the keyboard but the computer wouldn't start up. "Gah, I almost had him!" Throwing her hands up in the air, she threw herself back into her chair and stared at the screen disappointingly. "You don't know how many bank accounts I had to embedded alert if anything funny happens to it. How long it took," she trailed off miserably, almost pouting.

Oliver didn't say anything for a while, just standing up straight and taking a deep breath. "It's alright, Felicity, you'll get him next time," he said, placing a hand on her shoulder and peered down at her.

"Wait, you're still asking me to help you?" She asked, looking at him in confusion. "I failed, Oliver. The damn dude is too good." She broke eye contact, picked up a pencil and threw it at the screen.

"Hey, hey." He turned her chair around to face him, crouching down so that he was at her level and putting his hand on the handrests. "You did your best this time and maybe you've learned something that might help you catch him in the future. You're amazing, Felicity, and one time failure doesn't disprove that fact."

She let out a sigh. "I guess it's just been a while since I had any competition." A laugh came out of her and he smiled.

"But do you have any inkling of where he might be?"

"Well, I got so far as the east sector of the Glades before that jerk shut down my computer," she said turning her chair around as he stood back up.

"Sounds like he's a poor man himself," Oliver said. "He could be doing this whole thing as a scheme to get some money for himself so he wouldn't get caught."

"Like killing a whole lot of people at once but the intended target was just one particular person," she said, kicking the CPU monitor hard with her high heeled feet like it was junk from then on out.

"That's it." He snapped his fingers. "We create a list of names that the Phantom Hacker has been distributing his stolen money to and check to see if any name repeats itself."

"Yeah, but some of the people who had been receiving money from him doesn't even have a bank account," Felicity said, looking up at him. "Then there's the matter of how are we suppose to create that list? Suppose I hack into the police's records to take a peek but they doesn't even know each and everyone the money went to."

"Just a minute, how is he getting the money to the people who doesn't have bank accounts again?"

"Well, my guess is he's transferring it very discreetly into a ghost account offshore somewhere then withdraw from it then hand it out to the people personally," she told him, her expression thoughtful for one moment then she shook her head. "Aren't we going to tell the police about this? Or Malcolm Merlyn? 'Cause fifty grand sounds like a pretty good number to me." When she saw the look on his face, she quickly added. "That was a joke, I'm not really that into money. I mean, I am, who isn't but not that into into money. Just enough money. I mean, I was just joking."

Oliver nodded at her absentmindedly before speaking. "I'm sure the police will have the information they need sooner or later if they haven't already. For now I need you to compile a list of names of the people who had received any money from an unknown source. Find about about the personal money drop off if you can and try to find the ghost account, too. Maybe it'll lead us to him."

"Wow, you're willing to go through a lot to look after your family," she remarked.

"Family is everything," he said with a grin before striding away from her desk in his pale grey shirt and dark wash jeans and jacket.

"If you say so…" she trailed turning to the monitor and began messing with the wires, trying figure out a way to fix it.

 

That night, he wandered the streets in the east sector of the Glades hoping to hear something regarding the Phantom Hacker and overheard a man, Harold Kirkson he would later find out, telling his friends that he found ten grand stuffed into an envelope in his mail box. The man sounded extremely grateful and would not stop rattling on and on about what life he and his son could have from now on while the others listened and looked at him with greed and envy in their eyes. Telling Dig to tail the man, Oliver went to the Foundry to change and grab his gear.

Over the phone his bodyguard told him that the house the old man lived in was one that looked as if it could cave in on them any time. And he wasn't wrong. The whole thing was a disaster waiting to happen. Just a shift in the wind current, a little earthquake, a little heavy rain or a light storm, that man and his son would have been dead.

One more point for the Phantom Hacker.

Suddenly, out of the corner of his eyes, he saw a group of men approaching the house, clubs and metal shafts in their hands.

He let go so far as to knock on the door, push their way inside before Diggle found the fuse box and turned it off, drowning the house in complete darkness as Oliver went through the door, making quick succession of the first one by the window with the possibility of escaping and the one who was picking up the money. The third one, who was threatening Mr. Kirkson put up a fight, throwing impulsive punches and very poorly aimed kicks which he dodged, making the guy stagger back forcefully with one punch and subduing him completely with an arrow through his shoulder.

Looking up at a very terrified Mr. Kirkson, he said: "Hide the money."

The man nodded then scrambled to take the envelope from one of gangbanger's hand before running off.

Kneeling down beside the resisting man on the ground, he could faintly hear the police sirens in the distant and quickly said, his voice mutilated: "Before the cops get here tell your buddies over there that you attacked Mr. Harold because he did something to piss you off. I don't care what you come up with just don't mention that he received ten grand from an unknown source or I will find you and I will end you, understood?"

"Fuck off," the man said, spitting at him but missing by a mile.

At the speed of lightning, he took an arrow from his quiver, nocked it, then shot the man in his other shoulder. He let out an earsplitting howl of pain. "Do we understand each other?" He asked.

"Yes, yes, alright," the man rushed out, his hand clutching his arm.

"Remember, if it's prison you fear, fear me more."

Then he went out through the window, got in his car and drove away. Back at their "headquarters" with the TV on turned to the news channel, Diggle asked him: "So you let him keep it."

"He needed it and Justin Adkisson didn't," Oliver said, sitting in front of the monitor and watching as the business man unlocked the front door to his luxurious home and walked in.

Diggle nodded, a smug smile on his face and he leaned against a table with his arms crossed over his chest, looking at Oliver. "Sounds like you agree with this guy," he said. "Maybe you should just give the guy a break and let him do his thing."

"So that he'll steal from someone else on the list, making me go after whoever it is to justify his name - "

"Actually, he's not."

" - then get caught and end up in prison just because he means well," Oliver said, swiveling his chair so that he can look at Diggle. "If we're going to be suspected working together, might as well make it true."

The corner of Oliver Queen's friend's mouth lifted up at the corner as he shook his head in disbelief. "You want to recruit him."

"In a way. We need someone to help us with tracking people and getting the records and information we don't have. We may have to stop the whole hacking into bank accounts and stealing money and giving it to the poor thing but this should help him feel like he's doing some good."

"Not to mention the police are looking after him to know who's next on your agenda."

"But let's not forget the fact that he could still be doing this for his own good," Oliver added, frowning.

He need facts, he need information or he was going to go crazy. He needed a plan of action, he needed to know what the Phantom Hacker's goal really is and what he was really up to and to do that, he needed time but he wasn't a very patient person. Resilient, yes, but not patient. He needed Felicity Smoak to give it her all to get the information he needed and maybe he was going to have to give her a little push.

"Let's just wait for Felicity to do her thing first, shall we?"

"Exactly. Now, if you'll excuse me, Mr. Diggle, I have a corrupted businessman to bring to justice."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! So this is the new chapter, enjoy! And if you see any mistake in the writing, pardon me but I don't have a beta and sometimes I skip typing words and I'm a klutz. But if you're still reading then...
> 
> Enjoy!

"The Vigilante was reported to had made an appearance at Mr. Justin Adkisson's home, resulting in the admission of his crimes in front of the police officers who were stationed around his house for his protection against the man with the bow. This attack took place just hours after Mr. Adkisson's bank accounts were hacked into by the Phantom Hacker and millions of what was supposedly money he earned by partaking in illegal activities disappeared into thin air and no doubt will turn up in bits and pieces in someone else's account. The police are now taking him in under custody and is questioning him for further details.

"There are people who are theorizing that the Phantom Hacker and the Vigilante might be working together as a team, bringing down the bad and helping the good but there are others who are convinced that they are not and then there are those who thinks that they're just outright criminals. So far the Starling City's Police Department haven't had any lead on either cases and are working hard to find out who the two mysterious - "

Oliver grabbed the remote and turned off the news channel, breathing out a sigh.

"Everyone seems to want to be a vigilante these days," Thea commented as she sat beside him with her legs tucked under body.

"Someone's gotta save the city from the bad guys," he joked, leaning back against the couch and nudging her shoulder.

"Yeah, but killing people and stealing their money isn't the way to do it."

"Well, well, look who's interested in defining what's right and what's wrong," he jested, looking down at his sister's light brown curls then raising a hand to mess them up.

"Hey!" She exclaimed, batting his hand away while he laughed.

"You've always been too easy to annoy," he said, getting up from the couch and stood facing her.

"Am not," she said indignantly. "And can you give me a ride to school? Walter's got something he needed to do so he left early," she said, tugging at the ends of her school uniform jacket.

"Sure, come on, Speedy." He gestured her to follow him, hearing a disgruntled: "Worst nickname ever." When she was up on her feet and beside him, he looped an arm through her shoulders and pulled her along.

 

She noticed him before he even saw her.

"Oliver!" Felicity called out to him from behind and he pivoted around to see her walking toward him in her bright yellow blouse, pencil skirt and stylish high heels. She was hugging what seemed to be like a really big stack of paperwork as she closed the distance between them both, wearing a wide smile on her face.

"Hey," he greeted her with a smile of his own. "What's gotten you all smiley smiley?"

"Oh, nothing," she said, trying to keep the papers from falling from her arms. "It's just someone I met."

He nodded, raising a curious eyebrow at her as she glanced at him, a tiniest bit flustered.

"So, anyway." Felicity then looked away, shaking her head and began walking toward her cubicle. "I compiled a list of names that had received a large amount of money from practically no one and guess what?"

"What?"

"None of the names were repeated twice or more," she said. "Whoever's doing this isn't doing it for himself."

Placing herself onto her usual seat, Felicity placed the stack of papers on her desk then reached for a folder and handed it to him. "Seems like two-third of four men's fortune can feed a whole lot of people." She glanced up at him, her eyes hard to read as he took it from her, making eye contact for no more than a second at best.

He flipped the thing open, scanned the entire list of names, not really knowing what it was that he was looking for. Maybe it was for a name of someone he knew or a name that could suggest that the Phantom Hacker was doing what he did for another reason but there was nothing that caught his eye.

"And the account?" he asked her, feeling a little let down.

"Nothing," she shook her head. "I've been looking into it all night and there's just literally nothing there. It's like all of what was left of the money had just disappeared and reappeared at those people's doorsteps."

Nodding, he looked hastily through the pages, noticing how detailed it was: the exact time when the deposits were made, when they were withdrawn, where they were withdrawn, whose money the money was distributed to certain people, how much of each transaction, how much had been withdrawn from the accounts,... It's like she had nothing better to do than to look into all of this for him.

"Does the police know about this?" He asked her without looking up.

"They know a part of it. There are a lot of transactions to go through in Starling City and I mean millions upon millions and most of them aren't at all legal nor traceable. It may take a while for them to sort through the mess and make up that list." She point at the thing in his hands. "Not to mention the possible cases they'd have on their hands through sorting through that stuff. And those who are professionals hackers are still looking for a way to bust the Phantom Hacker by finding him by themselves and through their coding to earn, you know, reputation so they're not exactly keen on helping the police."

"And you did what they couldn't in less than a day?" He asked, closing the file.

"Well, I have the time and resources to do it," she said jokingly. "It was kind of fun, actually except for the part where I couldn't find the account, that part sucked 'cause you know, I don't really like mysteries, they need to be solved or else I'd be extremely uncomfortable like I am now."

Oliver nodded awkwardly. "Well, I gotta go but thanks for this," he said, holding up the file and shaking it for emphasis.

"Sure, come to me whenever you want me," she said. "I mean, need me… I mean, not in that way, just… come to me whenever you have the need, uh, no. Uh, come to me whenever you need help with something that's no where related to your needs." Felicity pursed her lips and took in a deep breath, looking extremely uncomfortable.

"Yeah, okay, I think I got it," he said, rasping his knuckles on the table and smiling at her before turning to leave. "And Merry Christmas!"

"Oh, I'm Jewish."

"Happy Hanukkah," he replied.

"Oh… Ok… then…"

 

Diggle appeared right by his side the moment he walked out of the building.

"Any luck?" he asked, falling into step with his friend as they continued down the street on foot.

"None," he said, handing Diggle the folder. "The names don't match, some of the money disappeared and went into an unknown account then reappeared in someone else's mailbox. I'd say we hit a dead end but that would remind me that the itch I couldn't scratch is still itching like hell."

"But you just said it," Diggle said, opening the passenger door out for him like any bodyguard slash driver would.

"Exactly."

 

The Queens Family annual Christmas party is just that. A fancy party thrown by the Queens in the spirits of celebrating Christmas where families and friends got together and mingle, share stories with each other while drinking champagne and eating lavish food and dancing. It was a tradition that hadn't been embraced for five years since horrible news of the Queens Gambit crashing at sea but then Oliver Queen decided to bring it back once more.

So that later on he could regret ever making that decision in the first place.

To be completely honest, the party didn't start off being totally disastrous. On the contrary, as the people started to arrive, the Queens residence along with everyone who was at the party was having quite a good time. The beautiful dress, the fine suits, the festive activities,... It was all very charming at first.

"Look who's here," Diggle whispered in Oliver's ears as the front doors opened and closed, letting through a tall, slim figure of a beautiful woman with golden blonde curls which hung down to her shoulders. She was dressed in a captivating red wrap dress that hung just above her knees and black stilettos and she saw him immediately.

"Ollie!" She exclaimed as she went to him.

"Laurel," he said, moving forward to embrace her. "Where's Tommy and Sara?"

"Tommy told me to meet him here and Sara said that she's feeling a little under the weather so she stayed home," she said.

Nodding, he replied: "I'll call to check up on her and I think he's just around the corner." As he sounded the words, that familiar ache whenever he thought about his best friend being with his ex-girlfriend resonated inside of him.

"Yeah, I should go look for him," she said, smiling at him, her hand rubbing his arm. "Merry Christmas, Ollie."

"Merry Christmas, Laurel," he said and she kissed his cheek before leaving in search of her boyfriend.

"That went smoothly," Dig commented.

Oliver threw him a look.

And thus began a routine of people coming up to him to make small talk, wishing him a merry christmas and asking him about his experience on the island and what was it that he had to do in order to survive.

Then, she came in through the door with her tablet in hand, looking utterly lost and thoroughly blown away by her surroundings. Felicity wasn't dressed up like everyone was, instead, she was sporting one of her colorful work dresses with her hair tied up high and her glasses perched on the bridge of her nose. And even though she might not be one of the most well dressed people at that party, she still stood out from the crowd like a splash of bright, vibrant colors on a sophisticatedly drawn picture. It was why she'd caught his eye from all the way across the room.

When he saw her, his brows furrowed and he immediately excused himself from the conversation, slipping through the throng of partygoers to get to her as she wiggled her fingers at him in greeting and pursed her lips, glancing around at the people who were starting to take notice of her out-of-the-norm attire.

"Hey," he said, placing a hand on the small of her back and leading her into a corner so they could talk in private. "What are you doing here?"

"He just striked again," she said quickly, looking up at him with a hint of a smile in her eyes. "It'll be on the news any minute now but…" she trailed, turning on her tablet and showing him a map of the east sector of the Glades with a red dot flashing. "I found out where he's been doing his deeds." She showed him the screen. "Apparently, Queen's Consolidated's computer systems are a little too easy to hacked into and shutdown."

Oliver bent down to look at the screen in her hand then glanced up at her silently. She took it as a chastising look and quickly started to babble. "Not that I'm complaining or implying anything, it's just that I went home and picked up his trail on my laptop and tracked him down and it didn't crash so there must be something wrong with the one at the company… Anywho, I didn't want to tell you about this on the phone because it just seemed so important and I thought that maybe we can go catch this guy together, you know," she said, moving her arms around for emphasis. "It'd be like an adventure… But I'm totally fine if you'd want to call the police and give the information to them, 'cause going out and catching him ourselves sounds pretty dangerous..." she trailed, looking timidly at him, waiting for a response.

Giving her a weird look, he ended up saying: "Felicity, you are remarkable."

She preened, meeting his gaze and held it. "Thank you for remarking on it."

There was a moment of silence when they just stared at each other before a scream cut through the air and both of their heads snapped to the side, breaking the contact, to look at what had caused the disturbance.

Whatever it was, it seems to be coming from the other half of the house for the people were rushing their way and out the front door, pushing and stumbling onto each other to get away from whatever it was. Then it was the sound of glass breaking and more people screaming and a whooshing sound that suggested that an arrow was taking flight.

Oliver glanced at Felicity just as she turned her head to look at him, confusion and fear marring her features.

"Go home, Felicity," he told her as he grabbed her bicep to pull her forward the current of people fighting over themselves to get out of the house.

"What? No! What about the hacker? Aren't we going to deal with him? And what about you? I can't just leave just because some guy decided to make a grand entrance into your house uninvited when he could have walked through the front door," she protested, throwing her weight back and stood her ground, struggling to get away from his grip. "Can't you, for once, let the police deal with this? Stop trying to be a hero Oliver. Whoever's in that other room could kill you without a second thought and do you really think that your family's going to survive losing you a second time?"

He stopped trying to get her to move and looked straight into her blue eyes, his stare piercing and fierce, his voice eerily calm. "Go home, Felicity, that's an order."

Then, he let go of her and began pushing his way through to the other part of the house as she stared at his retrieving back with her tablet clutched to her chest and worry written all over her face.

When he got to the scene of the crime, he saw Moira Queen, his beloved mother, passed out on the ground with a dart in her neck. It was no surprise that his strong mother stood up against the attacker to protect her home, her family even when she had no chance of winning but it didn't mean that he had to like it. Then there was his sister, joining their mother on the ground as she passed out with her body twisted in an uncomfortable position and a small yet visible dart on her neck.

Everything was knocked over by the mob of people trying to get out, the glass window was shattered and there was blood pooling on the floor… Walter's blood. It was the blood of his stepdad.

The cause of death was an arrow through his heart. A black arrow. And its owner now stood no more than a couple of feet away from him in his black leather suit with his face masked.

"Who are you?" He asked, his mind reeling, trying to figure out who the attacker was and why he killed Walter and how he was ever going to take him down right then and there without revealing who he really was. and the answer was there will be a day when he finally unmasked this… this… Dark Archer, and that day will come but whatever day it would be, today wasn't the day.

"No one that concerns you," he replied, his voice deep and heavily altered, before shooting a dart straight into Oliver's vein and he felt himself began to sway, his vision began to get blurry and the world tipped on its axis and he passed out.

 

When he woke up, he was in a hospital bed surrounded by his mother and his sister and Diggle. All looking extremely grief-stricken, worried, fearful.

"Mom?" he asked, trying to get up as his head spun and the side of his neck aching.

"Oh, Oliver," she exclaimed, rushing to his side and taking his hand into hers. There were tears in her eyes and he knew who they were for.

"I'm… I'm so sorry I couldn't stop him," he said, his gaze coming to rest on Thea then on Diggle, whose face was stoic with a hint of sadness and sympathy but his eyes were hard and determined as he gave Oliver a nod when he caught his eyes.

"Oh, honey, you couldn't have done anything more that you haven't already," she said tiredly, lovingly as she stroke his hair and looked down at him. In her eyes such pain, such sorrow.

"I'm so sorry, mom." Getting up from the bed, he swayed a little but straightened himself in order to pull his mother into his arms to comfort her for her lost.

Twice had she lost her husbands. A woman could only take so much.

He glanced back and saw that Thea was watching the exchange, tears pooling in her eyes and streaming down her cheeks, her mascara running as she hugged herself, looking so small and fragile. They were both in their evening dresses, he noticed. His mom and sister must have woken up and checked out of the hospital before him. Yet they had waited for him to wake up, to know that he was alright.

Extending his left arm out to her as he kept his right one around Moira, he gave her a heartbreaking look.

Thea Queen stepped up into her brother's embrace and that was all it took. It was like something broke open inside of her, leaving her gaping and vulnerable as she started to sob into his shoulder. Twice now had she lost her fathers as he lost his. They were all suffering from the lost of the two men that were of most importance in their lives and as Oliver rested his chin upon Thea's head, feeling her slender hands clutching at his hospital gown, he felt reas forming in his eyes and he tried to blink them away, his head angling toward the ceiling so they wouldn't spill out.

But seeing his family like that, it got the best of him. One tear then two tears slowly made its way down his cheeks and disappearing into Thea's soft brown curls as he made eye contact with Diggle over her head.

The bodyguard didn't say a word as he met Oliver's eyes, he just nodded one more time with resolve in his eyes as anger and determination settled in Oliver's. Whoever did this was going to pay for their actions. He was going to pay and he was going pay dearly, Oliver vowed, and he will find out who the man underneath the black mask was. It was only a matter of time and until then, the anger that was burning inside him will become the his motivation to keep searching, to keep looking, to exact vengeance for his stepdad. He and Walter Steele may not have seen eye to eye on many things but he was family nonetheless and nobody should take his family away from him without expecting retribution.

After they had broken away and checked Oliver out of the hospital, they went to the police station, which was visibly overworked by the amount of people who were brought into questioning, to give their testimony.

When it was his turn, he was asked to describe the attack, the attacker's physical appearance, what he saw when he went into the room, why he didn't run like everybody else and what was he doing before the attack happened.

"I was talking to a friend, Felicity Smoak," he said.

"Felicity Smoak…" the detective trailed, his head bending down to undoubtedly look at the list of guests who made an appearance at the Queens' Annual Christmas Party. "There's no Felicity Smoak on this list."

"Oh, she wasn't invited, she just came to show me the plans for decorating my new club in the Glades," he lied smoothly with a small smile.

"Uh huh." The man looked skeptical. "And she couldn't have done it tomorrow or anytime later on rather than crashing a party she wasn't invited to?"

"It was a very smart design and she tends to get a little over excited," he said.

"Uh huh." He nodded, still not looking very convinced. "A couple of guests said that they saw a girl wearing a multicolored dress talking to you in the corner and she was showing you something on the tablet. Blonde hair, glasses, high heels?"

"Yes, that's her."

"And when people were panicking and trying to get out you to were standing in that corner bickering?"

"Yes, sir," he ground out.

"Well, then, Mr. Queen." The detective inhaled a deep breath, his chest rising from the motion. "It seemed like your little friend," he said with emphasis. "disappeared into thin air because she was no where to be found when we arrived at the house. Any suggestions as to where she might be?"

At the raise of the detective's eyebrow, Oliver pursed his lips and shook his head slowly, looking lost and clueless while the gears in his head turning.

"No?"

He sliced his head to the side once again i silent negation.

"Then that'll be all, Mr. Queen," he said, getting up from his chair. "Thank you for cooperating with us."

"My pleasure," he said, nodding curtly at him before leaving the room.

Later on, Oliver Queen would try to contact Felicity Smoak and would get no answer on her cellphone. He tried her home number and yet still nothing. He felt her voice messages and waited for her to call him back but his cellphone didn't receive any incoming calls from her, just from people calling and asking him how he was.

He spent that night comforting his family before excusing himself to bed when slipped out of the house to go to the Foundry. Diggle was there.

"Thought you'd be here," he said.

"Felicity gave me an address for the Phantom Hacker's place not far from here. I think the visit is way overdue," Oliver spoke as he took out his bow.

"Oliver, you're grieving. You're not in the best mindset to do this," Diggle said, coming closer to his friend.

"She's missing, Diggle," he said, looking at his friend. "And the address is the only lead we've got. Don't you think it's a little convenient how she went missing after the attack which occurred just moments from when she arrived at the house to tell me about what she'd found?"

"And Walter's involvement in all of this? Have you thought about that?"

"Not really but whatever I think of will only be speculations. If I catch this guy, they will be facts."

"I know it's tempting but at least wait until the morning when you've calmed down and will be able to think straight," he said hotly. "For all you and I know the possibility of you going after this guy is to shoot him down just to get some of that anger from your system."

"I won't kill him, Dig," he said. "Like I said, I need facts."

And he went to the house with the address Felicity showed him and found nobody. Nothing. There was absolutely nothing there but trash and an empty space and a wireless router.

The address was just somewhere for him to do his thing. It wasn't really his home and he really didn't live here. Oliver supposed he could watch over the house for the next couple of days until someone showed up but that would be too long. What if Felicity's in danger? What if she's been taken somewhere dark and her life is being threatened all because she helped him? But what other choice did he have?

Turns out the Phantom Hacker wasn't such a good guy.

A week went by and there was no sign of activity regarding the house and there was still no sign of Felicity Smoak, who had become a celebrity of sorts due to her multiple appearances on the news as the reporters would encourage people to contact the authorities when they see her anywhere. Apparently, she was wanted for questioning by the police.

And he had hit another dead end.

But then again just a couple of days later, almost two weeks since her disappearance, a video showing Felicity tied to a chair with tears in her eyes and a gag in her mouth was showed on the news with a demanding request from the man behind the camera:

"Get the Vigilante."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Was it bad? Was it good? Let me know! Just a couple of words will do because, you know, an author do want to know how's the people feeling about her work. Not that I'm an author, I just spew random stuff onto white paper.
> 
> 'kay, byeeeeee!
> 
> Jen out!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why am I updating constantly? I don't know, because my muse was with me, I guess. That or I have an absurdly large amount of time doing nothing all day. Hope you enjoy this! And you don't think I'm focusing too much on this Phantom Hacker thing do you? Someone told me that I am and I'm really concerned that maybe I wasn't splitting the scenes even enough or isn't giving you enough of the Olicity dosage each chapter. :(
> 
> Anywho... Enjoy!

Jumping through the skylight and crashing down onto the ground with a soft thud, Oliver can dimly hear the police sirens wailing from outside. Ever since the video had gone viral, the warehouse that was said to be holding Felicity inside has been surrounded by police cars and its officers, waiting to knock down doors to get inside, rescue the hostage and take down the culprit. Unfortunately for them, the whole point of taking a hostage is to prevent any harm befalling the the one holding behind the whole hostage situation so it was safe to say that they weren't doing much good.

But he can and as he waited for the pieces of glass from the skylight to stop falling, he knew that he it wasn't a trap for when he glanced up, there was Felicity sitting under a single light bulb, tied to a chair at her wrists and ankles with a gag in her mouth. On her face dried up tears and dirt stuck to her skin and her hair disheveled, looking like it had been grabbed and yanked and had been the pillow beneath her head for the past two weeks. The sight was like a knife to his gut and the longer he stared at her miserable form, the deeper it seemed to have gone.

He rushed to her side, fully aware of how she thrashed around on the chair and tried to shout something at him, and untied her binds. With her hands free, she quickly removed her the piece of cloth in her mouth and said to him: "You have to get out of here. He's after you and he's strong, very strong and very skilled. He's going to kill you. Just get out of here."

Seeing Felicity Smoak in panic mode was not something anyone would ever want to experience. If in conversation with people in daily life, she babbled incessantly, then in a situation where she was utterly terrified and weak, she kept repeating the same thing over and over again as her voice shook and her body trembled. Her beautiful blue eyes would go wide, filled with unseen terrors and urgency and her lower lips would quiver and her hands would hold onto something, someone, almost crushing it beneath her fingers if she weren't so feeble.

And it was not something Oliver would ever want to see again.

"It's okay, just go right out the door. Run," he said, his voice diluted as he grabbed her shoulders and shook her slightly, staring straight into her horrified eyes even though she couldn't see his. "Run."

"But you - " she began to protest but he spun her around and gave her a little push toward the entrance to the warehouse.

"Go!"

Then she ran, looking back at him twice before disappearing into the darkness beyond.

Before he knew what was happening, his body jerked to the right just as a black arrow flew over his shoulder and hit the light bulb, efficiently snuffing out the light. Sparks flew everywhere before total darkness came over the the whole warehouse.

Following his instincts and advancing in the direction the arrow was shot from, Oliver squint his eyes to get used to the loss of lighting and jerked to his right one more time as another arrow whizzed by him. This time, he reacted quickly and pulled an arrow from his quiver and shot back in retaliation. He heard the arrow hit the wall.

"Who are you?" he spoke. "What do you want with me?"

There was a moment before an answer came. "What any archer wants," the voice said. "To see who's better."

In the distance he could hear the sound of the metal doors opening and footsteps of the police coming onto the premises and rays of flashlights moving back and forth. Then he heard footsteps moving away from where he was facing and he followed it, withdrawing an arrow from his quiver and shot instinctively before hearing it impaling into the far wall.

It was only several seconds before he had to move suddenly away from where he was standing to avoid getting hit by himself.

From that moment on it became like a game of sorts with both of them shooting at each other and him following the man with the black arrows. Both of them coming close to being hit most of the time but in the end no one got a scratch on them and as his eyes got used to the darkness, Oliver could make out the Dark Archer's silhouette and discern his surroundings better in order not to trip over something and almost got himself killed.

After a while, they came to a standstill as he back the man into a corner and they came up face to face.

At that point, the darkness didn't come as an inconvenience for him anymore for he knew where to aim his arrows and shoot just for the man to catch is deftly in his hand.

The Dark Archer then attacked him and they fought. Oliver would take a swing at him and he would dodge it with ease while he struck at Oliver's head and he would miss it by the inches. They went over forgotten tables, boxes, chairs, appliances,... Attacking each other with all their might and with all of the skill they thought they'd honed. Felicity wasn't wrong when she said he was very strong and very skilled. The thought of how she knew that he was very strong and very skilled troubled him to no end and the thought distracted him for a microsecond but that was all it took for his opponent to knock him off his feet, having him flat on his back.

"First Hunt, then Ravich, and now you," he said, looming over Oliver as he kicked him in his abdomen again and again and again. Every kick precise and delivered more pain than the last. "I know about the list, and the man who authored it wants you dead."

Even though his mind right about then was filled with mostly the word 'pain', he tried to reach a hand up to at least grab onto something that would hoist his body up and give him a better vantage point but failed. The Dark Archer grabbed his hand, bent it backwards and more pain rushed from his hand down his arm and throughout his entire body. He cried out. Unfortunately for him, the man wasn't done, he then twisted his arm, effectively breaking it and sending him into a whole new different level of agony before letting him go.

"They call you the Hood. Let's see what you look like without it," he said, his voice triumphant as he bent down with his hand reaching for Oliver's hood.

Determined to not let it happen, Starling City Vigilante swallowed his pain and tried to move his good arm to take out one of his tricked arrows and punctured the Dark Archer's calf with it, making him stumble back and falling onto the ground, passing out immediately.

Taking his time getting up, he dragged himself out of the warehouse through a back door, his whole body radiating agonizing pain and he felt like he'd rather die than to endure a second more of it. Taking out his cell phone, he dialed Diggle and managed one word before passing out: "Help."

 

It was the second time he'd woken in a hospital that month and he was not happy about it. Especially when he saw his mother's and sister's worried faces right after he woke up. They'd been through enough and could have lived without seeing him like this.

And Laurel had been there as well, coming in to see if he was alright and exchanging awkward small talk about the cases at the firm and how he used to do stuff like this all the time. After that was Sara, the other Lance sister who was working at Queens Consolidated for almost three years after she returned from her time away from Starling City for the better. She left a juvenile, reckless girl and came back a mature, responsible adult. What transpired during the five years she'd left was still a mystery even to those who were closest to her.

Then, it was just him and Diggle and apparently he was in a motorcycle accident. See, he was on a bike and a semi just pulled right in front of him. How horrible. He could have died. And he also had "a pneumothorax, three broken ribs and a concussion, but the doctor said you're going to be fine."

"How's Felicity," he asked from the bed, his arm in a cast and his head covered with bruises.

"Fine," Diggle replied. "A bit shaken up but she's fine. They're questioning her right now as we speak but it'll be a while before they release her from the hospital. She was underfed for the last two weeks and there are bruises and cuts all over her body."

At those words, his hands balled themselves into fists and his teeth started to grind against each other. The Vigilante was what the Dark Archer wanted. But why take Felicity? Maybe he was working with the Phantom Hacker, baiting him and waiting for someone who was most unlikely to want to track down the hacker and capture that person in hopes that he'd be the Vigilante. But what they got was a woman so they must have thought she was working for the Hood. Cheers to him that he was right but she didn't know that. Felicity must have denied everything because it took so long for the Dark Archer to decide that it was more productive to use her as bait and draw him in. After all, the Vigilante was all about helping people in need, was he not?

Or maybe there was a bigger picture that Oliver was not seeing. The Dark Archer said that the man who authored the list wanted him dead. That meant the notebook he found in his dad's pocket wasn't written by him but by someone else. Somehow all of this was connected to each other but for the life of him he could not figure out how. It was all a big pile of mess as far as he could see.

"I never should have asked for her help," he said, shaking his head.

"You couldn't have known, Oliver," Diggle said, his own head moving side to side. "You couldn't have known that would happen/"

"But it was a possibility, Dig," he spoke, his voice acquiring an edge to it. "I knew the risk and yet I asked for her help anyway. I should have known better. What happened to her is the reason why we've been keeping what we do a secret. To protect the ones we care about."

"And we have. Oliver, Felicity doesn't know anything about your secret. She could be thinking that the Phantom Hacker is a guy who's just overly obsessed with keeping his identity a secret. So, no, you couldn't have known it would happen because there was nothing to be suspected."

"Just forget, I'm not arguing about this. I should have known better, Dig. She wouldn't be in this hospital with me if I had," he said, looking away.

"And you wouldn't be in this hospital if you weren't so hung up on crossing names off of your father's list."

It's not my father's list, he thought to himself but that discussion would be for later.

"Tell me when I can go see her," he spoke tiredly, closing his eyes as he heard Dig sigh and let the pain lulled him to sleep.

 

"Knock, knock," Oliver said as he tapped his knuckles against the doorframe as he poked his head inside

"Oh, hey," she snapped her head in his direction and said, a little jumpy.

"How are you?" He asked, stepping into the room and closed the door, meeting Dig's eyes through the glass part before smiling sympathetically at Felicity.

"I'm good, thank you for asking," she told him, forcing a smile onto her face.

She certainly looked better than before but certainly not good. She was too frail and weak and her blonde hair was still dry and rough, unlike the way it was before as it hung to her shoulders.

"I'm so sorry, Felicity, I shouldn't have asked you to track the hacker down," he began, pulling up a chair next to her bed and sitting down, resting his good hand on the edge of her bed. "I should have just left it to the police."

"What? Oliver, no, you really shouldn't have. We were so close to catching him while the police were still running around looking for clues," she said, sitting a little bit straighter and wincing in pain. Reaching out, he took her hand and supported her back, helping her resettled against the headboard. "I'm okay, I'm okay," she kept saying but from the look on her face, she was anything but okay. "And I meant it, Oliver. You couldn't have known that the guy was a psychopath or whatever it is that he is. He looked like one of the good guys and you couldn't have known." Felicity reached out to cover his with hers, smiling sadly at him.

"But he was a criminal nonetheless and they are unpredictable and I shouldn't have tried to track him down by myself," he said, looking into her eyes that told him he didn't believe that. Those blue eyes told him that she knew he would have either way. "Look, Felicity, I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry for dragging you into this,." Oliver turned his palm up to hold her slender hand in his, giving it a light squeeze.

"Oliver," she said in exaggeration. "It's fine. I'm fine. This whole thing fine. And we're not going stop looking for him now that we know how much of a threat he can be to people." When he opened his mouth to protest she quickly said: "I'm the patient I get to talk." He closed his mouth and she smiled, her usual self shining through. "We almost got him, Oliver and we can get him again. I'm not willing to give up on this but if you are I'm giving all of the information we've gathered to the police and tell them that you told me not to hand them in."

"Felicity… Are you blackmailing me?" he asked with amusement.

"Well, blackmail is such an ugly word… think of it as persuasion with a little force," she said, her words blurring into each other as usual and she smiled for real this time and seeing her like that made him glad that Felicity Smoak wasn't lost to the world. "And I heard you got your into some trouble today. On a bike. Which is kinda hot. Not that I think that you're hot. Well, obviously you are," she moved her hands around to make a point. "But, you know, pfft."

Pursing his lips to keep from smiling, he nodded his head as Felicity darted her eyes from one place to another, practically anywhere but to him.

"Yeah, I got into a car accident, hence the cast," he moved his eyes down to the white bulk cradled against his chest and she nodded.

"Isn't it hot in there? Don't you get the feeling of wanting to scratch it but you can't 'cause your arm is covered with plaster? If it were me, I would be going crazy for not be able to scratch an itch. And I tend to get itchy in places I can't scratch. Funny how that works."

"Yup," he said," all the time."

She nodded, her lips jutting out a little.

They didn't say anything for a while before she spoke again.

"He wanted to know if I was working for the Vigilante." Felicity kept her gaze down, looking at her hand which were fidgeting in her lap, her voice small and timid. "He wanted to know who the Vigilante was and how did he get the list and why was I working for him…" she trailed, her voice getting smaller and smaller as she took a peek at him and he could see that there were tears in her eyes. "Can I trust you Oliver?" she suddenly asked him and he gave her an odd look. "The thing is, I've been debating whether or not to share this with you for weeks and I'm not an idiot."

Lifting her head to look at him, she seemed nervous and agitated.

"You've dropped some fairly ridiculous lies on me, and yet I still feel like I can trust you. Why is that?" She cocked her head to the side slightly, probably not even knowing that she's done it and peered at him curiously.

"I have one of those faces," he joked, smiling and as she looked away from him, annoyed, he quickly said: " Sorry. Yes. You can trust me."

She turned back to stare at him for a moment before saying: "Then I have something to show you." Moving her body aside with some effort, Felicity reached under her pillow and took out a small notebook with a cream colored cover before leaning back against the headboard.

Oliver stopped breathing when he saw the thing in her hands as if it had sucked all of the oxygen out of the room.

She held it out for him and it took him a second to reach out, trying hard to keep his hand from shaking.

"Have you ever seen this before?" she asked as he took the notebook from her, their fingers brushing ever so lightly.

"No." He answered immediately. Almost too soon. He opened it as a person would out of curiosity. "Where'd you get this?" He questioned, flipping through the pages and saw the xact names in the one that he had.

"From you stepfather."

"From Walter," he muttered to himself. No wonder he was killed by the Dark Archer. Whatever is going on in this city must have a whole lot to do with the list. "Where did he get it?" He looked up at her and saw that she was watching him very closely.

"He said that he found it in your house," she said tentatively. "That it belongs to your mother." His heart stopped. "I had Barry bring it in. Whatever that list means, Oliver, it means something important. Walter thought your mother was hiding. Something more, so he wanted me to look into it but then he got killed off by the some person who took me wanted to know about the Vigilante and about the list. Oliver," she paused, waiting for him to glance up. "I think this list might have cost Walter his life."

He let all of what she'd told him to sink in before speaking: "You knew about this all along and you're telling me this now. What changed?"

"Because I was taken by the same man who killed Walter."

"Is that why you helped me track down the Phantom Hacker? Is that why you've been pretending to buy my crappy lies from the beginning?"

"No," she said, shaking her head. "I would have helped you anyway, no matter how odd or weird or terrible your excuses were."

Oliver nodded, still reeling from the fact that this list was in his mother's possession and yet she had said nothing to him.

"And who exactly is Barry?"

At that, she had to tried not to smile. "Allen. Barry Allen. He's a scientific assistant in the Criminal and Forensic Science Division of Central City Police Department. He came to visit the city the day you came for the list of names the Phantom Hacker distributed money to and we just kinda bumped into each other. He came back when he heard the news…"

"Mmm hmm." He nodded as an unpleasant feeling settled in his stomach. He was not warming up to this Barry guy. "Well, I really should get going," Oliver said. "Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me about this." He shook the notebook her way and Felicity looked at it with a haunted look.

"It was nothing. You have one of those faces."

He chuckled and said: "That I do and Felicity," he met her eyes and took her hand in his. "If you ever need anyone to talk to, you have my number." She nodded, putting her other hand on top of his. "And my home address and my email address and my fax number."

Felicity laughed, the grin on her face lighting up the whole room and its gloomy atmosphere.

"And your social security number and your criminal records and academic records,..." she listed but then stopped at the look on his face. "If it's online I can find it," she said with a look.

"Alright, get some rest," he said, helping her lie down onto the bed and gave her shoulder a squeeze before heading toward the door.

With his hand on the knob, he turned back and said one last sentence to her: "Felicity, you are very brave. Don't ever forget that."

"I won't," she replied, smiling at him while lying in bed with her blonde hair fanned out around her on the pillow and her body tucked safely under the blanket.

he smiled at her before pulling the door open and stepping out.

"I told you she was alright," Dig remarked as they walked down the hall back to Oliver's own room.

"She is, but what she told me isn't."

And he thought people came into the hospital to cure their diseases. If every trip coming to the hospital was like this one from now on, Oliver was going to have a perpetual headache and heart attack.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, I'm just puking on blank paper here. So did you like it? Hate it? Think that I'm shitty? Let me know! Because just one little line of your thought would brighten up my whole day.
> 
> And thank who have been supporting this story *ILoveYou* even to those silent readers who just read, you know, silently.
> 
> Have a nice... time everyone!
> 
> Jen out!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy! or not...

Thanks to Felicity's decision to inform him about his mother and Walter's little secrets, he was now one step closer to finding out what the hell was going on in Starling City. Or not for when he went to crash his mother's meeting at the Queens Consolidated's building three days later as the Vigilante, knocking everyone out cold by his tricked arrows, and was just beginning to question his mother when she started to ramble on and on how she had a daughter and a son who had just lost their father and if they were to lose her as well, they would be scarred for life. And all of that was to buy her some time in order for her to grab her gun and shoot him in the shoulder.

Whatever that could be said about Moira Queen, she was not a stupid woman.

His mother immediately dialed the police after he dropped down onto the ground like a sack of potato, pain once again muddling his mind but Oliver was determined not to get caught. So he dragged himself off the floor, rushing out of the office, not completely aware of the fact that the amount of blood which had seeped out of his wounds was more than evidence enough for the police to identify him. Clutching his shoulder, he made it to the elevator and reached for his cell phone, which wasn't there for he and Diggle had a fight over whether or not he should have "a little talk" with his mother about the secrets that she had been keeping. Long story short, Diggle wasn't on board with the idea and in his head, Oliver thought what harm could his mother really inflict upon him so he set out without any kind of backup. It was a terrible, terrible thing to do in hindsight.

In the end, he ended up in the backseat of Felicity's car, knowing that she would be jumping head first into her pile of unfinished workload after weeks of disappearing even though she needed rest and would be hanging back in the office late at night. Also, a car's lock could not, apparently, handle an arrow puncturing through it.

While he waited for her to appear, he drifted in and out of sleep, his mind becoming less and less aware of his surroundings as more and more of his blood began to ooze out from the holes in his shoulder. Every movement sent jolts of pain throughout his entire body, every breath put pressure on his shoulder and he felt like he was dying. A fact of which he wasn't wrong.

Then, when he was just about to lose consciousness again, the driver's side door opened and Felicity Smoak got in, placing her handbag in the passenger seat.

Swallowing the pain, he spoke up: "Felicity."

Literally jumping out of her seat, startled, she turned back to look at him, letting out a surprised: "Whoa."

"I'm not going to hurt you, Felicity," he said, trying to keep the pain he felt out of his voice in order to not make her panic.

"How do you know my name?" she asked, peering at him in morbid curiosity.

"Because you know my name," he replied, grinding his teeth as he reached up a hand to pull back his hood.

Meeting his eyes, she said in a sense of odd accomplishment: "So you really did save my life." A hint of a smile appeared at the corner of her lips before she shook her head as if to clear an unwanted thought. "You're bleeding."

"I don't need to be told that."

"You need a hospital."

"My…" He sucked in a deep breath and pinched his eyes shut as the pain from his slight change in position took over his senses. "My new club, in the Glades."

"No, you…" she paused and looked at his condition with her lips set into a grim line. "You need a doctor, not a construction worker."

"Felicity," he said, moving his head up with some effort to stare into her eyes. "You have to promise me that you're going to take me to my club and nowhere else."

She took a moment to search his gaze, another moment to assess his condition then sigh and said: "Yeah, promise."

As she turned back around, he dropped his head back onto the leather seat and let go of the tension in his pain was still making itself known inside of him, crawling from the tips of his toes to the bullet wounds on his shoulder.

Before he let his mind slipped away and darkness take over, he heard her muttering with another heavy sigh: "Something tells me that bloodstains are not covered under my lease."

Then, all he felt, saw and sensed was darkness.

 

When he woke up this time, there was a sound of a heart monitor beeping somewhere and bright lights blinding his vision. His first instinct was to find Felicity and scowl at her but then he blinked the brightness away and above him, a picture of two worried faces looming over him and he relaxed.

"I guess I didn't die," he said, staring up at them. "Again." He saw Diggle's mouth twitched up as he shook his head and rolled his eyes as Felicity just smiled in relief at him then at Dig. "Cool."

They helped him up to a sitting position with his legs dangling on the side of the table and Dig handed him a mirror gor him to check his wounds.

"It's not bad," he commented, looking at the image reflected in the glass surface. It certainly wasn't bad bad but it was still very noticeable and would be very, very hard to explain to anyone who would ever see it. "So how am I going to explain this one?" He asked Diggle as he saw Felicity moving toward the computers silently as if she was on a mission in his periphery.

"Hickey gone wrong?" he jested.

Oliver was about to retaliate by dishing out some pithy reply but was cut off by Felicity. "The police collected a sample of your blood at Queen Consolidated," she said as he grabbed a blanket and wrapped it around his upper body. It was absurdly cold underground in the Foundry. "I just hacked the crime lab and ordered the sample destroyed." The sound of her typing on the keyboard echoed around the room before it ended and she swiveled in her, his, chair to look at them. "Oops.

"I hope it's alright." She got up, rubbing her hands together as she looked up at him. "Your system looked like it was from the eighties, and not the good part of the eighties, like Madonna and, well, legwarmers."

"It's a lot of work," he said, nodding toward the computer system. "Does that mean you're in?"

"You mean as in I'm going to join your crusade?" She asked, motioning her hand to indicate her surrounding and the two men in front of her.

"Well, you're practically an honorary member of the team already."

"So Mr. Diggle said." She pursed her lips and seemed thoughtful for a while, her hands was constantly moving whether it was to rub them against each other or for her to wave around to make a point. "I'll think about it."

"If you're just going to just 'think about it' then why'd you upgrade my system?" He questioned, staring at her with patient blue eyes.

"First, because seeing a network that poorly set up hurts me. In my soul." She took her hands and placed it over her heart. "And second, I want to catch the Phantom Hacker. I want it just as much as you do. But not enough break a gazillion federal laws and end up in prison. Trust me, orange may be the new black but I'm better suited in something more… not a prison uniform."

"Felicity," Oliver said with an exaggerated sigh. "You already broke a hell of a lot of federal laws helping me trace the guy by hacking into the police case files, database, bank records,... and by not contacting authorities when you've got information that could help progression of the entire case. The way I see it, you're already in over your head."

She groaned, banding an arm across her chest while the other was brought up to cover her face as she lowered her head in fatigue. "My boss is persuading me to join him and his bodyguard in illegal vigilante activities. There has got to be a compliment in there somewhere."

"There is," Oliver said.

She chanced a look at him and was met with his piercing yet calmly patient stare. Felicity glanced at Diggle next through her fingers and he shrugged, amusement evident on his face.

"Mr. Diggle told me that the notebook you use to fight crime is the same notebook that got Walter killed." She suddenly changed the subject, turning the tables so that it was his turn to be in the spotlight.

He said nothing.

"I'll help you catch the Phantom Hacker and find whoever it was that killed Walter but that's it," she said. "Then I want to go back to my boring life of being an I.T girl. That's my offer."

"Ok," he replied, nodding solemnly.

"Ok," she repeated, nodding once, twice, then thrice. "So I've been meaning to ask Is there a bathroom? 'Cause I've had to pee since I got here."

Oliver chuckled and motioned his head. "It's upstairs to the left."

"Great," she said then went scampering off.

"Felicity," he called out and she turned back to look at him in question. "Thank you," he said, his voice full of gratitude

"Yeah." Felicity smiled kindly at him. She had the kind of smile that could lit a whole room and it warmed his heart seeing it every single time. Then, she pivoted around, on mission in search for the bathroom and he watched her figure retreat up the metal staircase.

It was just silence for about three seconds before Dig spoke up.

"Oliver, I know you don't want to hurt this girl and you didn't have any choice in telling her who you really were, but we're asking her to get involved in some pretty dangerous stuff," he said from his spot leaning his hips against the metal table that Oliver had laid on.

"We can protect her," he said, keeping his eyes trained to the last couple of steps leading up to the ground floor where she had gone out of sight.

"How?" He asked, doubt lacing his tone. "Your mother just shot you, Oliver. You can't even keep yourself safe."

"She was scared," he defended. "She was defending herself."

"Or, she was hiding something," he said, crossing his arms over his chest." Like maybe her involvement in Walter's death, or worse."

"Are you really accusing my mother for killing Walter - the man who she loved, who she married," he said. "Diggle, we don't always know why people do what they do. But what I do know is that when I was standing in her office with an arrow aimed at her heart, she begged me to spare her, all on behalf of me and Thea. Now, I've taken down a lot of bad people. None of them brought up their kids, Dig."

"Oliver, she had the list," he continued, not backing down. "Now she may not be in charge of whatever 'it' is, but she's definitely involved."

"Involved in what?!" He asked, his voice rising. Oliver was getting tired of him always questioning his mother yet was the one who told him to not confront her about it in the first place. "We don't even know what 'it' is, and until we do, she is off limits! Am I clear?"

"But Oliver, are you saying this because you truly believe she's innocent? Or because you don't want to face the fact that your mother might be guilty?"

"Enough!" He barked. "We are not going to discuss this subject any longer. My mother is innocent until proven guilty and that's final."

Yet, still, as he said the words, Oliver knew that Dig's question would carve itself into his mind and never let go until he gave it an answer because as strong and dangerous the Arrow might be, Oliver Queen was just a broken man. A stranger who had just came back after 5 years of being stranded on an island that few to none has ever heard of, a brother to a damaged sister and a son to a mother that he'd loved all of his life. What kind of son would he be if he had given into the idea that his mother was possibly involved in something more, something darker than charity balls and fundraisers? A smarter vigilante, was the answer.

 

That night, when Diggle had left and Oliver and Felicity were the only two left in the Arrowcave with her typing away on his, her, computers and him working on his arrow, she suddenly spoke up.

"You know, it's funny the way things work out."

"What do you mean?" he asked, looking over his shoulder at her.

"Well, it's just that who would have thought that Oliver Queen, former billionaire playboy would get stranded on an island for five years then come back to save the city as a vigilante known as 'The Hood'," she said without looking at him. "And me. Who would have thought that a daughter of a cocktail waitress in Las Vegas would go to college and move a thousand miles away to work at Queens Consolidated and get a boss who would later on convince me to join his team of vigilantes and that I'm not just some ordinary IT girl but was actually an IT girl with a possible criminal record."

At those last words she turned to him and smiled mockingly.

Oliver couldn't make up his mind whether he wanted to sigh in exasperation or chuckle in humour.

"Felicity, you are not going to go to jail," he said, his hands went back to 'playing' with his arrows.

"You never know what might happen," she said softly, sarcastically.

This time, he went with the heavy sigh. "I'm not going to let anything happen to you, Felicity so will you stop worrying?"

He heard her chair creaking as she swirled around. "I know you're not, Oliver," she said. "I know how good you are at stopping people from harming other people," she said to herself but he heard every single word as clear as day. "

His movements stopped abruptly, his head inclined inches to the left as he said: "What's that's suppose to mean?"

"Nothing," she replied and he could feel her pinching her eyebrows together, a little flustered. "It's just that… did you really have to kill those people?"

"Why are we discussing this again?"

"Because I was looking around for people whose names were on the list and I just thought… did they really had to die?" she spoke, her voice careful and timid, knowing she was kind of walking on eggshells. "Plus the awkward silence was getting kind of… awkward."

He stood up and replaced the chair so that he could sit and still face her. "Felicity, those people were tearing down the city brick by brick. They're corrupted and needed to be stopped, if not by the police then by someone else."

"But that doesn't mean that they needed to be - " she curled her fingers with her thumb extended and moved her hand across her throat, imitating the sound of one's head being chopped off.

"I gave them a chance, Felicity. All they had to do was to right their wrongs but they didn't. Some did but that was because they were more sensible than they were greedy, they learned their lesson watching the people who didn't stop breathing," he said, his elbows resting on his knees and his chin resting on his hands.

"But Ken Williams," she said, looking at him with sad eyes. "He was a single father to a ten year-old boy and he didn't get a second chance - "

"That's because people didn't just lose their homes, their lives were ruined and there was nothing he could have done to right that wrong."

" - and now he's dead and his son's in the system. Do you know how the system works, Oliver? If not then let me tell you, being in the system is not a great place to be. It's not even a good place to be. It's terrible, actually, just like killing off people is."

"Well, what am I suppose to do, Felicity? I gave him a choice and he chose poorly. Do I just let the guy live after that? To let him carry on with his life like nothing's happened? He ruined people's lived, Felicity. A lot of people's lives. And the thought of him walking free out there just doesn't sit well with me." Angered and somewhat insulted, he got up, grabbed his jacket and made way to the staircase. This night needed to end. Can't people stop questioning his decisions and just see why he was making them? "Good night, Felicity, it's late, you should go home."

Before he even got to the metal steps, a beep sounded loudly.

"Felicity, did you just computer override my lock?" he asked, taking a deep, deep breath.

"Maybe just a little."

"What are you doing?" Pivoting around, he looked at her, his eyes hard.

"Has it ever occurred to you you could do some real good in the city? Beyond just recovering people's stock portfolios and their saving accounts?" She stood up, her hands moving around as she spoke.

Without giving her a reply, he strode toward then past her, giving her a stone cold look as he pressed some keys on the keyboard. "You're not the only one who knows how to reboot my system," he told her.

"I made a mistake," she said, staring back at him.

"For questioning my decisions? You and Diggle both."

"No, for signing on with you. Even provisionally," she said, getting up and making her way to the stairs but turned to him and started walking backwards when she was halfway there. "I think I'll be working with myself to catch the Phantom Hacker from now on, thank you very much, because if you'll just kill him then what's the point?"

"He kidnapped you and held you captive for weeks, Felicity. He killed Walter. If anything, that justifies him being dead."

"No, it doesn't and we don't know that. We're just assuming that because it's the most logical and convenient explanation. Catch the Phantom Hacker and we get the other guy with black bows and arrows. And one death doesn't make up for another, Oliver so I will find him to get the truth. Or even if it's to warn him about you," she said, pursing her lips and turned away.

Once again, he watched as she walked away from him, watching as she disappeared up the steps then out of sight.

This night really needed to end. And those two should definitely get a medal for making him feel like shit and questioning everything and another for Felicity for the shortest alliance ever made. Everything needed to just stop moving and evolving and changing. He needed a moment to think and his shoulder was killing him. Definitely not the best day in his books.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know. I'm like Jon Snow, I know nothing. I felt weird writing this chapter. No idea why.
> 
> Have a nigh happy Friday y'all!
> 
> It's Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday... Ehh, it wasn't so bad.
> 
> Jen out!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys. So we're back to school! Yayy... Also, I apologise deeply for the mistakes I may have made 'cause ain't that good at catching my own mistakes so...
> 
> Enjoy!

"What should we watch?" Thea questioned as she gazed at the movie posters hung on the wall.

It was movie night, apparently, because he needed to redeem himself for not being there for their mother - who wasn't even going because she was too weak and tired to go and he shouldn't dare to think that he was "getting out of this one just because mom isn't going" - and for being an asshole of a brother and a son by not caring for his family enough for these past few days. The night their mother was attacked, she ambushed him and aired out all of his dirty laundry the moment he walked through the door. It ended with him apologising for not giving them the support they deserved and her accepting that they just had to accept each other - not for who they were but for the people they are now.

He might have had a few tears in his eyes, knowing how much his sister still cared for her next-to-a-stranger brother and that he had to keep lying to her in order to keep her safe. Oh, and he also found out that she had a criminal boyfriend named Roy. They had their chance meeting was when he stole her purse and ran away and she had to track him down, planning on getting him locked up but ending up falling for the bad boy with a backstory. To say that he was not a very happy brother was an understatement.

And so, as per his request to get to know his sister's boyfriend and her demand for him to bring someone along so that it won't be awkward (but she mainly just wanted to get his attention off Roy a little bit), there they were - Roy Harper, Thea, Oliver and Sara Lance standing outside of the movie theatre, wondering which movie they should watch.

"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sounds cool," Roy said with his hands stuffed into the pockets of his trademark red hoodie. Thea swore he never went anywhere without it. The guy looked down at Thea before up at Oliver, who greeted him with a stone cold, scrutinising stare, and turned away.

"Oh, trust me, you do not want to see a Michael Bay movie," Sara chirped in conversationally.

"Yeah, let's not watch that ninja thing…" Oliver nodded, agreeing with his friendly date. "Guardians of the Galaxy looks good. I keep hearing this talk about people saying it's a really weird franchise but they glad Marvel took over."

"The weirdest," Thea remarked. "Alright, let's watch it. It's suppose to be like, really good according to the citizens of instagram."

"Instagram doesn't have citizens." He saw Roy bent down and whispered in Thea's ears. "They have users. Know your English, Queen."

"Shut up, Harper," he heard Thea grumbled at him.

Glancing at Sara, he saw her laughed at the exchange and smiled when she met his eyes. "I think they're good together."

Giving her a doubtful look, the group proceeded to the ticket booth only to bump into Felicity Smoak and her date, by the position of his hand as it held onto hers tightly.

"Oliver," the blonde IT girl let out in surprise, her eyes darting to the lanky, boy-ish looking guy with dark brown hair and silvery blue eyes, dressed in a red shirt with a black suit jacket over it and dark pants.

Oliver disliked him immediately.

"Felicity," he replied, nodding courteously toward her.

She was wearing a bright neon pink dress, a cream jacket and was sporting a small beige purse which hung from her shoulder. The glass teardrop pendant she wore rested on her chest beautifully and the earrings she had on swung back and forth whenever she moved.

"Hi Sara, hi Thea, hi…"

"Oh, Roy," the kid spoke in an embarrassed rush. "Harper."

Nodding a couple times with her hands moving around, she pursed her lips as her eyes surveyed the group. "Oh! Umm, this is, Barry. Allen," she said, gesturing toward him and Barry waved awkwardly at them.

Ah, the infamous Barry Allen.

"Barry, this is Sara, Oliver, Thea and Roy," she introduced each and one of them to him and they all nodded at each other in greeting.

She met his eyes for half a second before turning away. It was evident that she hadn't forgotten about their little argument the other night. The look in her eyes for some reason made him feel guilty as if he'd done something wrong, something that he might be regretting.

"So," Sara started. "What are you watching?"

"Oh, we're watching Guardians of the Galaxy," Felicity said, letting out a small laugh. "Barry here's kind of a nerd for those things. Not that being a nerd is a bad thing. They're actually kinda cool. And really smart. Sometimes even really funny," she babbled on nervously, her eyes resting a moment or two too long on Sara, who just smiled as she listened to her.

"You're cute," Sara said.

"Thank you…?" Felicity trailed, looking nervous and jumpy.

They stood facing each other stiffly for another five minutes, meeting each other's eyes, smiling slightly before looking away before Oliver spoke up. "Well, it was nice running into you two but I think we should really go get our tickets before they sold out."

"What movie did you choose?" Barry asked, directing the question at Oliver and made eye contact without flinching and held his ground.

"The same one you did," he replied, his voice low and steady.

Barry smiled genuinely. "That's great! Maybe if we're lucky we could all sit together."

Yeah, maybe, Oliver thought as he smiled and nodded.

They let the happy couple go first before getting the tickets themselves and whaddaya know, his little group would be sitting right behind Felicity and her date and will be getting a full view of the romance. Oh, joy.

"I'll get the popcorn," Thea said, moving toward the concession stand before he stopped her, spying Barry at the counter.

"I'll get it," he said, looking down at his sister. "After all, it's my redemption." He winked at her as he walked away, catching her loving smile as he did.

Stepping up beside Mr. Boyfriend, Oliver acknowledged him and asked for a combo for four. "Hey," he said.

"Hey," Barry replied.

Pause.

"So you and Felicity," he began. "She seems to like you a lot."

"Yeah, the feeling's mutual, though," the guy replied. "She's hard not to like."

He nodded, agreeing with him. "That she is."

Another pause.

"And you and the… uhh… Sara? You two going out?" he asked just as the employees were finishing up their orders.

"Sara? Oh, no. " He shook his head. "She's just a friend."

Barry nodded, reaching for his wallet as their snacks were placed in front of them but Oliver beat him to the punch.

"It's on me," he said, glancing at him. "It's not like everyday you get to meet Felicity's date. She's lucky to have you."

"You really shouldn't have."

"But I did."

"Well, then thank you," he said, holding out his hand and Oliver took it and gripped it a little non too lightly.

"Have a great night."

"Yeah, you too."

When Oliver had settled into his seat between Sara and Thea (though he was seriously considering switching to seating between his sister and her morally doubtful boyfriend) and seeing that Felicity and Barry had also taken their seats in front of him and Thea as well, their eyes meeting briefly before she looked away again, Sara spoke up.

"She's been through a lot these past couple weeks, hasn't she?"

"Yeah, she had," he replied, peering at one of the two people who were talking and laughing happily.

"I'm glad she found someone to look after her," Sara said kindly, her voice soft and sweet like she person she was. "He's practically smitten."

"He sure does," Oliver said, openly staring at the way Barry Allen was talking animatedly with Felicity, his hands flying around and his eyes never leaving his date even for a second and though he couldn't see her reaction, he was sure that she was just as engaged in the conversation as her date was.

And all the while when his eyes had been glued to them, Sara's were glued to him, watching his facial expression as he looked at the couple with something far and strange in his eyes. A kind of sadness and a kind of happiness. So sweet yet so bitter, so tender yet so hard. Whatever Felicity Smoak was to him, she was definitely more than just the employee at Queen Consolidated who got kidnapped by some copy cat archer. She went beyond that. She was personal. She was special.

Smiling at her Ollie sadly, knowing full well that he wouldn't catch it and Thea was too busy shooting back witty retorts at Roy to notice them both, she thought of her time away from her family and from all of them. Sara remembered how the experience had changed her and thought of how the time on the island had changed her dear, sweet Ollie. And not just on the surface as in his demeanor, his attitude, his way of talking, walking,... but deeper. He looked a little sad at times, a little angry, then a little too calm and then there was that glint in his eyes.

He cared for her. Enough to let her go on a date with someone normal like Barry Allen and not with Oliver Queen - former playboy by day, vigilante by night.

 

"Thanks, Ollie, tonight was great," Thea said, standing up on the tips of her toes and kissed him on the cheeks softly at the bottom of the stairs. "We should do this more often."

"So I can see Harper pretend to yawn and put his arms around you again?" he said. "I think I'll pass."

She pouted and punched him in the arm playfully. "So? Does the poor guy get your stamp of approval?"

"Well, he was smart enough to keep most of his body parts to himself," he replied, givng her a crooked smile.

She gasped and stared at him in disbelief. "You did not just say that."

"Hey, I'm your brother. I have the right to get protective borderlining obsessive." He shrugged and followed her up the steps.

"You're a jerk," she told him but the grin on her face gave her away.

"Such lovely words you preserve for your brother, Thea," a soft voice sounded from above them and they looked up to see their mother wrapped in a fluffy robe with her blonde hair disheveled and her eyes red and puffy. She had bags under her eyes and Moira Queen looked tired but the smile she gave her children was warm and lively.

"Mom, we thought you'd be asleep by now," Thea said, rushing up the stairs toward her mother, leaving her brother to slowly descend up the steps by himself.

"I was but I heard you coming in so I thought I'd ask how your night was," she said.

"We're sorry we woke you," Oliver told her, coming over to give her a kiss on the forehead.

"Oh, I'm glad you did." She waved him off dismissively. "I missed out on a lovely evening. The least I can do is hear you talk about it."

"Well, it was awesome. The movie was really good and we met Felicity Smoak," Thea said as she put an arm around their mother.

"Isn't she the one - "

"Uh huh." Thea nodded. "She was on a date with this guy, Barry Allen and they looked perfect for each other."

"Well, it's nice to know that when bad things happen the good things are going to come along any moment," she remarked, smiling gently.

"Sure is." Oliver smiled back at her, trying hard not to think about Dig's accusations of his mother's crimes. "It's late, we should all get to bed and Thea here, has school tomorrow." He gave her a look and she returned it with a glare.

"Alright, good night sweethearts," she said to them and they bent down to gave her a goodnight kiss.

" 'Night mom," Thea replied, wandering off to her room.

"Good night, mom," Oliver said, his hand placing lightly on her shoulder before it was gone and he disappeared down the hall.

Looking after them, Moira thought of how a mother would and could do anything to protect her children. It was one of women's first instincts, to protect her children from harm's way. To do anything, even the most despicable thing on earth to assure their safety and she hoped that one day they would forgive her when it all fell apart.

 

He found himself at Felicity's empty cubicle the next morning, standing awkwardly as he waited for her to return and when she did, this was what she said:

"Hmm, I had a bet going with myself on how quickly you would visit. Well, you and Diggle but it's to tell me not to reveal your secret. Looks like I won."

"Actually, Felicity, I was hoping that I could get you to change your mind," he said, watching as she went around him to sit into her chair and placed her tablet on the table. "I made a mistake by being irrational and refusing to see your point the other night so I didn't exactly put my best foot forward. I was hoping that you'd give me an opportunity to do that now."

Staring at him suspiciously while he just kept a cheerful smile and a look of innocent on his face, Felicity weighed her options and sighed. "I'm listening."

 

After telling her their next target - the Dodger, a nickname he'd gotten because he usually avoids getting his hands dirty and instead uses hostages to steal for him by putting a bomb collar around his neck - and coming up with a plan to draw him out by placing a rare Spanish antiquity in a fundraising auction because, as Felicity would put it, he "has a taste for a very specific type of antiquity", they were all set to go and Dig and Oliver's jaws were somewhere on the ground when she attended the party wearing a golden sequin dress and had her hair curled and her glasses no where to be seen.

"Felicity you look…" Oliver moved his eyes up and down her body as she held her breath and waited for his adjective of choice. "Stunning."

He met her eyes and smiled. She held his gaze and the corner of her mouth lifted up.

"Thank you."

"You look amazing, Felicity," Diggle said and she thanked him.

"I'm getting a good signal from the GPS I put in your family's broach," she said, looking at her phone screen. "I can track it on my phone."

"The police are here, too," Diggle commented, looking around. "You bait's attracted them at least."

"That's not exactly who I'm looking to catch," Oliver said.

"Speaking of, have you given any thought to what might happen if this doesn't work and the Dodger absconds with your family jewels?" she asked, glancing up at them. "I'm sorry, that came out very wrong."

"Let's just keep our eyes open, Felicity," Oliver told her.

"Right," was her reply.

"So I'm gonna go keep my eyes open over there," Dig said and jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

"Oh, alright, I'll be somewhere next to the jewels, then," Felicity said, turning to move away with her phone in hand.

"I do love it when people get over their differences," Dig commented beside him as he watched her getting farther and farther away from him.

"Aren't you suppose to be keeping your eyes open over there?" Oliver asked, jerking his thumb and his head in the direction his bodyguard did.

"Touchy," he trailed out, holding his hands up in surrender while he backed away. "As you say, Mr. Queen."

Oliver threw him an exasperated look.

"And I'm gone." Then he was.

Standing around with nothing to do but to scrutinise everyone that passed him and everyone who looked even just a little bit suspicious, he decided to go to check on their bait.

When Felicity, who was hovering near the glass casings and looking extremely nervous and uncomfortable, she waved him over in a hurried gesture. "The Phantom Hacker struck again," she said, looking at him.

Oliver balled his fists up and had the greatest urge to punch something but he doubted that the partygoers were going ignore that little act so he just pursed his lips and kept the feeling of wanting to lash out at something to himself.

"But don't worry," she assured him. "I set up a program that would take care of the whole process of tracking him just for moments like this after you know, you apologised. So if we're lucky and his skills haven't been updated, we can actually find out who he really is." She gazed at him with a glimmer of hope in her eyes but something was still troubling her. Keeping his mouth shut, he waited patiently for her to voice her fear as he stared down at her bright blue eyes. "But," she continued. "If he had some other tricks up his sleeve it's not gonna work. Maybe, if I had a computer to work with, but as of right now, if he strays from the earlier patterns in his encryptions, we're going to lose him again."

Taking his time to process her words, he touched her upper arm and said with endearment: "We'll catch him, Felicity." The way he sounded her name with each syllable spoken so softly and clearly in his low tone, it got her heart beating faster and the sense of betrayal in side of her roared up. If only he knew the truth, he wouldn't be speaking to her with such care and such gentleness.

Yet, she nodded and raised her smaller hand to cover his and gave him a small smile.

They stayed like that for a while, taking comfort and hope in each other's touch and searching one another's eyes for their thoughts and unvoiced emotions, before breaking away.

"Anyone acting out of the norm?" he questioned, his hands going into his pockets.

"Nope," she replied, looking as if they were just having a normal conversation. Or as normal as they could ever have with her being one of them. "None, zip, zilch, nada."

He nodded and saw Diggle wandering around, his head turning this way and that way as if he was looking for something.

"What's he doing?" Felicity asked him quietly, her head cocking to one side.

"I have no idea," he replied, excusing himself to go over to him. "Hey," he said to Dig.

"Oliver, I was just looking for you."

"Yeah, I can see that but what for?"

"Seems familiar?" he asked, wiggling his eyebrows as he looked at a brunette wearing a long red dress that hugged her every curve holding a glass of champagne.

"Mmm Hmm."

"Well?" He looked over at his employer (kind of) with an amused smile.

"I'd rather take my chances with a deadly jewel thief," he said, glancing at Dig, who just chuckled. "This is why you were looking for me?"

"Yeah. I mean, there's not much else to do." He shrugged. "People get cautious and tend to shy away from the one who's standing by himself staring at other people."

Oliver rolled his eyes, turning around to look the other way in case the woman saw him and almost ran into Felicity.

She looked scared for real this time, not just worried. Her eyes were wide open and filled with fear as she looked at them and uttered: "I think I have a problem." There was a beeping red dot at her neck that wasn't there before and they both glanced down to see a bomb collar surrounding the column of her neck. He wasn't a psychologist or anything but that sort of thing usually illicit eminent fear from its wearer.

 

They got it off of her in the end after much shouting and much frustration and much terror, they eventually caught the Dodger and rescued Felicity from getting blown up into pieces. But there was still another matter to take care of.

Meeting up with Felicity and Diggle after it was all done down at the Foundry, he suddenly found a set of arms wrapped around his middle and a head of blonde hair resting against his chest.

"Is this how I'm going to be welcomed back from now on?" he questioned her quietly atop of her head.

She removed her arms around him and looked up, noticing that his arm was still lingering around her. "It'll stop when you stop saving my life."

She then smiled at him and he returned the favor.

"Now, I know that you've had a very busy night but we got him," she said, moving away to grab her tablet, her finger tapping the screen and when she looked back up at him, her face was a picture of distraught. "He's at Queen Consolidated."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My new english teacher sucks, by the way. Anywho, thank you all who have been supporting this story so far and sticking to it as sucky and a little inconsistant as it is.
> 
> I luv you guys.
> 
> Have a nice upcoming weekend!
> 
> Jen out!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back with another anthem why stop when it doesn't have to end.
> 
> Yeah, I be crazy.
> 
> Enjoy!

He arrived at Queen Consolidated's rooftop to find a woman with platinum blonde hair in a black leather suit and a mask covering her face preparing to take off as she clutched a computer to her side. Oliver immediately nocked an arrow and aimed it at her. "Stop right there," he said.

Hearing his voice, all of her movement came to a sudden halt.

"I have nothing to do with you," she said and like his own voice, hers was also mutilated by a voice filter.

"Drop the computer and turn around. Slowly," he instructed, not bothering to argue with this Phantom Hacker who had a fetish for dressing up. Not all super intelligent people were unfashionable, as it would seem.

She did as he asked, lowering herself to put the laptop gently onto the hard surface beneath her feet before turning around carefully, her hands by her head, not making any sudden movements.

"Take off your mask," he continued.

"I told you," she said, not doing what he "asked". "I have nothing to do with you. Let me go."

"Who are you and what is your connection with the Dark Archer?"

"He and I have no connections," she replied, taking a step forward in his direction tentatively.

"Don't move," he grunted, the voice filter making his voice deeper and more guttural and dangerous. The woman was closer to him by about two steps before he snapped and she stopped moving. "Then why was Felicity Smoak kidnapped the night the Dark Archer attacked and killed Walter?"

"I do not know." She took another step toward him and he shot an arrow that flew by her, barely missing her head but nicking her ear a tiniest bit.

"I said, don't move." And she didn't. "Where did you get the List?"

"What List?" she asked and he didn't know whether or not she was truly confused or was just playing him. He went for the later.

"Do not play games with me," he growled. "Where did you get the List?"

Then, she moved way too fast for him to catch on. At the speed of lightning, she ducked down and out of no where, in her hands were two batons as he fired arrow after arrow at her but none of them hit their target. She took a shot at his legs, probably planning on taking his feet out from under him so she could make a quick and harmless escape but he jumped up just in the nick of time. Taking advantage of her momentarily vulnerable position, he took his bow and was about to struck her in the head to knock her out cold when she met him halfway with one of her baton and the two weapons crashed together, creating a force that made them both stumble backwards.

Firing an arrow at her shoulder but missed as she dodged it and ran to the edge of the rood, he followed her, arrows flying before him going straight for her but each and every one of them missed. The Phantom Hacker was almost at the roof's edge and was looking as if she planned on jumping off it onto the next building when he caught up with her.

Landing a blow squarely on her shoulder, he had the upper hand and pushed forward, delivering fast, precise, efficient hand-to-hand combat moves as she defended herself by blocking him but didn't hit back. The Vigliante tried to get her off guard just for a second during their fight so that he could rip off her mask and see who she really was underneath. Chances were, he didn't know who she was and that would be a good thing for he would have no qualms about handing her to the police after he was done questioning her. But if she was someone he knew and worse, someone he was close to, Oliver wouldn't have known what to do then.

Nearer and nearer they went to the roof's edge, fighting and grunting and huffing at each other until she went over the edge.

It all happened in a blink of an eye, too fast for him to process.

One minute they were nose to nose hacking at each other then the next she was free falling down the side of the building with her hair flying about her and her arms extended forward. But she didn't hit the concrete ground with a sickening crunch. Instead, the Phantom Hacker turned herself mid fall and landed gracefully and safely into the alleyway without a hair out of place. Without a look back, she ran for the exit and that was when Oliver got his back his bearings. Taking an arrow hastily from his quiver, he shot at her figure, a black spot in the night light. Another then another until she disappeared from sight.

She got away.

The Phantom Hacker got away.

 _Again_.

And it wasn't because  _she_ couldn't be tracked, it was because he had let her go.

* * *

"Oliver!" Felicity exclaimed, jumping out of her chair the moment she saw him striding toward them.

"Felicity - "

"On it." In a flash, she was up and was in front of him, taking the laptop he had in his hand and looking at him sadly with her lips pursed. "You'll get him next time."

"Actually, 'he' was a 'she', Felicity," he replied, anger rising inside of him once again at the thought of the Phantom Hacker escaping and he was too incompetent to stop her. "The Phantom Hacker's a woman."

The woman sliced her head to the side, confused. "A… a woman?" she asked. "But you didn't say any - "

"She's got skills," he said, walking past her toward Diggle, who was leaning against the edge of the table with his arms crossed over his chest as was his usual pose. "Lots of them. And most of it aren't exactly computer wise."

"I told you we didn't even know whether he was even really a 'he'," was all Diggle said in return.

Not in a mood for being reminded of his failure to speculate and to examine every aspect of the story, Oliver quickly removed his earpiece and weapons, laying it all down onto the table with a little too much force.

Both of his partners noticed the change but none commented on it.

"So that's why we heard scruffling when you were out. I just thought she had a bodyguard standing nearby or something," Felicity said, getting back into her seat and opening the laptop.

"Well, it wasn't," Oliver said, suddenly right beside her. "By the looks of it she's planning on being in the game for a long time."

"In the what game? The Vigilante game?" she said as her hands started typing away on the keyboard.

"She's not a hero, Felicity."

'"Yeah, well, considering the fact that you got the gender wrong, I wouldn't be so sure about that," Diggle remarked.

Oliver glanced over his shoulder and shot him his best glare.

"But I am sure about one thing," he said, reaching behind him to pick up a USB driver and threw it over to Oliver, who just looked at him questioningly but took it and connected it to one of the computers nonetheless. The only thing that was stored on it was an audio file.

Furrowing his brows at Diggle and meeting Felicity's curious stare, Oliver double clicked the file and it began to play.

 _"It's taken care of. I've taken care of it. Carl Ballard will not be a problem anymore,"_ his mother's voice rang out and he snapped his head toward his bodyguard, his hands balling into fists instinctively.

Didn't he told him that his mother was off limits? That she was innocent? That she played no part in whatever the hell that was happening or was going to happen to the city? What the hell was this?

But before he could say anything or voice his colorful string of selected words for Dig to hear, a male voice replied to his mother. _"Given your propensity for squeamishness, I'm assuming that Mr. Ballard remains in good health."_

 _"I made it clear to him persuasively that his plans endangered the undertaking. I didn't have to make the usual threats,"_  his mother said.

_"Excellent. Now, one more matter to attend to.I need you to have to contents of this address removed and disposed of thoroughly. The warehouse where you're storing the remains of 'the Queen's Gambit'."_

Oliver could feel his eyes going wide as he stared at a spot on the floor, his ears straining to hear the next words, his heart pounding faster and faster as the memory of his father shooting himself on that lifeboat to give him the best survival chance came rushing back, as the memories of him spending five years on the hellish island played through his mind like an everlasting horror film, as the recollection of how he got each and everyone of the scars on his torso flashed before his eyes,... The pain was back. And so was the sense of betrayal but instead.

_"I already told you, I knew Robert's yacht was sabotaged."_

What?

_"And I don't think it serves for anyone to find evidence of that. Do you?"_

After that, it was just Diggle getting busted by someone and ended up knocking that person out.

"Somebody tried to kill my father," he said quietly.

"And your mother was involved somehow," Dig added.

"You do not know that she was involved, Diggle!" he shot back vehemently, still not convinced that his mother was one of the bad guys. For all he knew, that was a recording of someone who just happened to have a voice similar to his mother! They still know nothing about anything.

"What I do know Oliver, and so do you, is that she kept this a secret," he said calmly and Oliver didn't deny that fact. "Why would she do that if she didn't have something to hide?"

Chewing on Dig's words, Oliver glanced down at Felicity who had been watching the exchange with a keen eye and now looked up at him with sympathy and sadness in her eyes. He wondered what she made out from all of this. Was she on Diggle's side, thinking that Moira Queen could possibly be involved in one of her husband's death or was she on his side, thinking that there was another explanation for all of this somehow?

Shaking his head and taking a deep breath, he said: "I need some air." And with that, he grabbed his normal clothings off of one of the table and went out the way he came in, knowing that there was no lingering upstairs for the construction was done and the decorators didn't usually hung out at their workplaces at night.

* * *

After changing his clothes and taking his bike out for a ride, he went back to the Foundry, figured he'd spend sometime to himself relistening to the recording and mulling stuff over. With his rage and emotions partially dimmed after the little detour he made around the city, everything came into perspective for him. Every nitty gritty, ugly detail, every possibilities, the worst and the best. Reality was a bitch.

Opening the door and walking down the metal steps, he thought to himself that he should have known Felicity would still be here. She was just as hung up on the whole thing as he was. After all, she was the one who had been kidnapped and tortured for informations for almost two weeks. Then, he thought about how he had failed to get answers from the Phantom Hacker when they were face to face, so close yet he let her escaped. Oliver didn't just failed himself. He failed her. He failed to give her closure, failed to give her the answers that she deserved.

Dread filled him, mixing along with a sense of guilt. Nighttime was hard on vigilantes.

"Hey," he greeted Felicity, taking a seat next to her and peered at the laptop's screen. "Any luck?"

"Luck has nothing to do with the fact that this thing is completely void of any information whatsoever," she said in a disgruntled tone. "I mean, she made me go through a bunch of really really sophisticated and long encryptions just to find out that there's absolutely nothing useful on this laptop unless you're really bored and want to play Pinball."

"Then why are you still working on it?" he asked.

"Because I was thinking that maybe she hid all of her files, you know, like ghost files that are very carefully hidden but so far, nothing," she replied, glancing at him from the corner of her eyes and noticing his displeased expression. "But on the bright side, I was able to track the laptop's serial number to its owner."

At that, he sit a little straighter in his seat and leaned toward her a little. "And?"

"And…" she drawled, her hands stopped typing for a moment to turn her head and looked at him. "And it belongs to one Mr. Trey Hudson." He waited for her to go on. "But then it got stolen from him when he left it unattended one late night at a coffee shop." She bit her lip and kept on looking at him, gawking for his reaction.

"Felicity," he said her name slowly, very, very slowly. "How was that news being on the bright side?"

"Well, you looked so morose and I just wanted to cheer you up," she said in a rush breath. "But then I didn't know what to say because we're kinda short on the good news department so I kinda blurted out one of the bad ones…"

" _One_  of the bad ones?"

"Uh, no, I think that was all the bad news we had for today. Well, that and your mother's possible involvement in your father's death." At his look she backpedaled. "Not that I think Moira's involved in Mr. Queen's death. What kind of wife kills her husband? That, didn't came out the way I intended it to…" Looking distressed, she added: "And it didn't help your mood so I'm gonna go back to doing" - she gestured at the laptop with her hands - "this, now."

Nodding awkwardly, his own lips pressing against each other, he moved the chair away from her to align himself with the computer which had the USB connected to it and played the recording.

It repeated itself over and over again as time passed. All the while Felicity was hard pressed on finding those hidden files and he wondered if they were even really there and if they were, did it really took that long to look for them? But then again he shouldn't question or doubt something he would never understand. Just like he shouldn't question or doubt why Moira had said those words because she was a wonderful mother and a caring wife. He shouldn't.

Still, as her voice along with the unknown man's echoed off the walls again and again, that belief was shaken up so bad he was starting to doubt his own judgement of people and how he perceived them.

Findling with the father's notebook as he stared blankly at the power button at the bottom right of the computer screen, thought after thought ran themselves through his mind while his ears listened to the voices in the recording talk and typing sound from the keyboards until the whole process was cut off by Felicity when she called out his name.

"Oliver."

"Hmm?" he turned to look into her concerned blue eyes.

"You've been playing that over twenty times," she commented, worry lacing her voice. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"What's there to talk about, Felicity?" he asked her, shrugging his broad shoulders, his hands continuing to play with the notebook. "My mother's possible involvement in my father's death, my letting the Phantom Hacker escape, my refusal to look at things from angles which are hard to look from, my failure for not getting you the answers you deserve, my doubt at how good I really am at being who I'm suppose to be,... There's really nothing to talk about, Felicity. Everything's a mess and that's a fact."

She just gave him a sad smile before reaching a hand out and covered both of his, preventing him from closing and opening and flipping through the pages of the book. Felicity looked at him with soft, caring eyes from behind her glasses and spoke: "Everyone's got a blind spot when it comes to family, Oliver. It's not that you're not good at evaluating a situation or a person from every angle, it's just that it's your mother and it's harder when it's someone you love.

"And you didn't fail me, Oliver. You're  _helping_ me to catch her. Without you, I wouldn't even know that she was a woman and I wouldn't have gone as far as getting this laptop." She glanced at the thing sitting atop the table. "Albeit it's useless but it's proof that without you I wouldn't even touching it in the first place. And Oliver" - she looked back at him, her blue eyes burning a hole in his chest - "no one's expecting you to be anything. We love you the way that you are. You're brave, you're funny, you're kind, you're a wonderful son and a wonderful brother and a wonderful friend and are exceptionally good at doing that thing with the bar that you do when you work out."

Oliver chuckled and it made Felicity smile. "And you're a kickass vigilante and an awesome boss and a really, really epic archer and - "

"Alright, you made your point," he said, shaking his head and grinning.

"Don't beat yourself up too much, Oliver," she said, staring into his eyes as he stared back, hypnotized. "I don't know how all of this is going to pan out but I do know two things: you are not alone and I believe in you."

Then she hugged him. Felicity threw her arms around his neck and pulled him close, dragging her chair underneath her to move closer to him as her body did and he wrapped his arms around her. She laid her head gently onto his shoulder and held on tight. He smelt the scent of strawberry and wild flowers on her hair and inhaled deeply, the scent calming him further and quieting the rampant train of thoughts inside his head. It was as if her embrace flipped a switch inside of him and suddenly he was tired and wanted nothing more than to go home and go to bed.

When they broke away, their faces inches from each other and he could see the cilvery specks in her eyes, she smiled at him, her hands rubbing small, soothing circles on his shoulders before pulling away.

"It's late, and I don't think there's anything on this thing" - she waved at the laptop in bitter resentment - "so I think we should call it a night."

"Yeah," he agreed, nodding his head.

They shut down the power, drowning the place in complete darkness before heading out.

He walked Felicity to her car in silence, both enjoying just simply being in each other's company.

"Well, good night, Oliver," she said smiling softly at him.

"Good night, Felicity," he replied with a smile of his own.

She nodded and began rummaging her bag for her car keys as Oliver walked away to his bike with her image still lingering in his mind, the memory of how comforting her touches felt and the sweet way she had smelt. Felicity was the one of the only two people who he could truly trust, who knew everything about him, the good and the bad. Knowing that, he couldn't stop himself from turning around and asking her one simple question that would change the dynamics of their relationship forever:

"Felicity,would you like to go out to dinner with me?"

* * *

_"Breaking News: The Phantom Hacker had finally picked out his next victim after a long hiatus and had done what he does best, leaving Ms. Yasemin Soze half a billion poorer. As usual, the police - "_

"Seems like she's picked the next name to cross off the list for you," Dig said, looking at him.

"No, she didn't," Oliver replied, donning his best poker face.

"What? You stopped wanting to clear her name for her?" He asked sarcastically.

"Yasemin Soze is already considered ruined. She inherited money from her parents and decided to invest it in crime. Now with most of that gone, I doubt she will be causing anymore trouble."

"So you're just going to keep letting people think that she doesn't deserve what was done to her because technically you can now cross another name off your list? Oliver, she's a criminal and she needs to be brought to justice. You can't just let the Phantom Hacker take her life away then not show the people why she did it. I thought you were more organized than this."

"I am more organized than this, Diggle but I am not going to help a possible criminal who's after another criminal. When we had finally caught the Phantom Hacker and when everything's back to normal, then, I will take care of the people that I haven't dealt with. Let the police thinks the Hacker has turned completely bad. It'll give them better incentive to do their job," he said, his eyes hard and his tone grave. "But for now, forget all of that, we need to get my mother to talk and I think there's only one way of making her."

* * *

And so Diggle drugged them by shooting darts into their necks when they were talking in their family room. He brought them to a warehouse somewhere far from the city and tied them into chairs. It took a lot of grunting and shouting and screaming and crying and punching to get Moira talking and when she finally did, the words stuck like lightning to their ears.

The Undertaking, a plan to level the Glades using a machine Unidac Industries, a subsidiary of Queen Consolidated, made so that Malcolm Merlyn could rebuild it. The machine can cause an earthquake, making it look as if the leveling was just one of nature's destructions. And his father was involved in it before he died. Moira only took over and promised not to say anything to anything because she feared for her family's lives.

He said he wanted answers and facts. Well, there were his answers and facts and once again, the truth was a bloody ugly thing to hear.

On top of all of that, he had a date with Felicity tonight. Wonder how that might work out.

* * *

_"Dinner? With you?"_

_He nodded._

_"As friends?"_

_"More or less," he said._

_"Umm, okay," she replied, letting out a small laugh._

_"Perfect, I'll pick you up at seven." Oliver grinned at her then started to walk away._

_"Oh! You don't know where I live!" She called out._

_"Felicity." He turned back and gave her a look. "I'm your boss, it's my job to know where you live."_

_Then he winked at her and was gone, leaving Felicity to open then close then reopen her mouth again, speechless. Yeah, because that last line wasn't creepy at all._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooooooooooooooooo? What did you guys think? Leave me a comment telling me what you thought because your thoughts are hella precious to me. :)
> 
> Anywho... thank you to those who has been supporting this story and I'll see you next time!
> 
> Jen out!
> 
> PS: Also, if you liked this like a whole lot, share it with your Olicity shippers! Because the more readers the merrier.! *I'mAGreedyPerson*

**Author's Note:**

> What's'ya think? Love me or hate me, leave a review telling me why so that I can either cry in heartbreak or smile in happiness :0 Hope you enjoyed it and thank you for reading!
> 
> Jen out!


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